‘I will find the time to keep writing in this new job’, I promised myself and everyone around who asked. ‘We’re setting it up so that I can.’

Of course, having time is only a tiny, tiny part of the writing equation. More importantly, there have to be words – and for me, as an introvert, they have to be words that aren’t already spoken; and for me in this new role, they have to be words that are mine to tell. I must have deleted twenty posts in the last few weeks, because they broke either or both of those rules. Hence the silence.

–

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

from Before you know what kindness really is by Naomi Shihab Nye

My new year’s resolution was to be kind. It’s going the way of all new year’s resolutions: I am failing, but at least now I remember I’m failing.

I chose kindness. I didn’t realise then that with it I would be choosing sorrow. Sorrow didn’t come by way of a resolution.

I didn’t connect the different meanings of resolution before I wrote that sentence: I resolve to live more kindly; I want sorrow to be resolved.

i wrap my dreams in a protective layer of cynicism
and place them in the dark to keep them safe…

I woke up this morning with this line running through my head, picturing eggs being wrapped in spider-web like threads, and hidden in a corner away from tramping feet and the harsh glare of daylight.

This was a christmas of unexpected, quite unbelievable miracles – some were big, life changing discoveries for people around me, others seem in comparison quite tiny but were nonetheless just as miraculous – a text from a someone whose silence for months had been deafening; a tiny, tiny step towards restoring friendship.

The thing that held these miracles in common is that no-one involved believed they could ever happen, but they chose to live as though they might.

i will let myself have hope, but only if i can survive without its fulfilment…

My favourite poem last year was Padraig O’Tuama’s ‘Facts of Life’, which he told at Greenbelt. It ends with these lines:

… that you must accept change
or die
but you will die any way
so you might as well live.
and you might as well love.
you might as well love.
you might as well love.

I’ve been wondering, since being in the prison and being told i had too much hope [!!], about the role of a community in hope. i have some friends holding hope for a situation i’m on the edges of – nothing big or dramatic, just some sadness that could do with some resolution. i mock them for being too idealistic, because those of us involved know full well that this situation is too complex and difficult to turn out happy ever after… but i have to admit that something has changed in me because of this community of friends who take responsibility for believing that it might one day be different. They don’t tell me that one day everything will be alright, but because they believe it might, they insistently push those of us involved to always choose the path of love. And them doing so has meant i am choosing another way of being in this situation to what i would ever have chosen before.

I think that’s what having a community of hopers around me does. It makes me live with love, even though i know that won’t make things alright. I’m not stupid; i’ll keep wrapping my dreams in cynicism and putting them in the dark for safe keeping. I’m just counting it as something of a miracle that i have the dreams to begin with. And i’m so grateful for those who hold them for me in their hope.

I hope the year is happy, wherever you are…

I have no resolutions, just lots of hopes that this year will be different to the last – and a commitment to living as though it will be.

Christmas in the prison was hard. It’s a sad place this year, sadder than normal, but the service was lovely and the men were appreciative. We needn’t have done the service really – they just loved that people were in there on christmas day, and that they could talk to someone about who they missed or the difficult phone call they’d just had with their mother or their children. Guided meditation worked best with this year’s group – i suspect because it meant there was enough silence for those who couldn’t understand what we were talking about. Every year I remember that creating silence is actually one of the hardest tasks when curating spaces – how carefully we have to shape it in order for it to be safe, and how every word that surrounds it has to be crafted to not expect too much from those we invite into it.

One of the men told me during advent that i was too hopeful, which i’m sure will amuse many of you…

On my desk when i returned this morning was this gorgeous book, that i first heard about through this website, which i think was far and away my favourite website for 2011. The book has given me a first idea for the fringe festival space we’ll do this year… and another idea for the commission for mission staff gathering, and still one more for our communication strategy this year… it’s been worth it’s price already.

It’s been almost a year since I’ve been in Port Phillip prison. It was both lovely and terrible to walk in and pick up conversations with some of the men right where we left off last Christmas day… to hear them talk about we what did last christmas, to see the return of some who left a few years ago and didn’t quite make it on the outside.

I have the feeling this will be the hardest year we’ve done. The make-up of the unit is completely different to the last few years. There’s been a big changeover of population in the unit and the whole feel of the place is different. In my notes last night I wrote down that we need to use language we’d use with 6 year olds. Which is tricky of course – there’s not much language i’d use with 6 year olds that makes sense of the most complex human and theological issues that we can grapple with. Though i guess there’s not much language i’d use with 36 year olds that makes sense of that either… The group also seem to be mostly non-readers, and very concrete thinkers [most are on medication that would make it difficult to hold a thought for more than a sentence]. And among them they’re dealing with massive issues: the illnesses of people they love, who they quite probably won’t see again; the vagaries of a welfare system that means post-release housing is oppressively hard to come by; the breakups of their most significant relationships; the movable feast of truth and justice… All of those practical issues are tangled with shame and grief and fear and anger. The group seem more vulnerable this year. I certainly felt more vulnerable alongside them.

Funny, with all of that, how it seems so right to be back there. It’s good to be taken beyond myself; and very good to be with those so desperate for hope that they won’t let me give up on it.

Someone pointed out to me last night that things are dark around this blog at the moment… they do seem that way! it’s important to note again that this blog is not an autobiographical journal of my life. And when i do write about my own life, it’s almost always in retrospect. things are good here. Mostly anyway. Though i am convinced this advent actually is darker than normal, and not just for me.

I have, however, been on a desperate search for new inspiration. My job is changing shape at the beginning of next year, and i’m at an awkward ‘finished and not yet begun’ point with much of my work. We have been trying to create a balance in the new position which will mean that i continue to do some of the creative parts of my job – I’d agreed with the board that this was important, because i know that the imaginative stuff is fun, and it makes me want to come into work each day. What this last few weeks has reminded me is that I actually need the projects in which i use my imagination, in order to know how to do the other stuff i do which doesn’t need imagination. None of my brain seems to work if i’m not using part of it to push beyond what i already know. I have to use my imagination, even in order to be able to do things that don’t require imagination.

I’m heading to Hobart for a couple of days next week, to put some flesh on the bones of an event I hope to run next year, which will be a space for people to rekindle their own imaginations… and I’m also putting some space into thinking about Lent next year – the current idea is a weekly space, called Relent. I feel ridiculously excited about both these things. And this afternoon i’m heading back into the prison to begin preparing there for Christmas – always a favourite part of my work.

And in the interim, as part of my search for inspiration, I’ve been watching Andy Goldsworthy’s Rivers and Tides. It has a lot of gasp-out-loud moments – for sheer beauty, of course, but also because of the unexpected moments of resonance. I actually cried this morning while watching an excerpt where he was making a sculpture of sticks that hung like a cobweb from a tree, while talking about fragility: When I make a work I often take it to the edge of its collapse. It’s a very beautiful balance. As if on cue, the wind came up around him. He desperately tried to hold the cobweb together, but it disintegrated completely, and its beauty, made possible only because he was willing for it not to last, disappeared and became simply a pile of sticks.